CHAPTER X.
"My dear Ned, do be reasonable! Your sister is in despair, and so am I.Why do you torment us by staying on here in the heat, and taking allthese engagements, which you know you are no more fit for than--"
"A sick grasshopper," laughed Hallin. "Healthy wretch! Did Heaven giveyou that sun-burn only that you might come home from Italy and twit usweaklings? Do you think I _want_ to look as rombustious as you? 'Nothingtoo much,' my good friend!"
Aldous looked down upon the speaker with an anxiety quite untouched byHallin's "chaff."
"Miss Hallin tells me," he persisted, "that you are wearing yourself outwith this lecturing campaign, that you don't sleep, and that she is moreunhappy about you than she has been for months. Why not give it up now,rest, and begin again in the winter?"
Hallin smiled a little as he sat with the tips of his fingers lightlyjoined in front of him.
"I doubt whether I shall live through the winter," he said quietly.
Raeburn started. Hallin in general spoke of his health, when he allowedit to be mentioned at all, in the most cheerful terms.
"Why you should behave as though you _wished_ to make such a prophecytrue I can't conceive!" he said in impatient pain.
Hallin offered no immediate answer, and Raeburn, who was standing infront of him, leaning against the wood-work of the open window, lookedunhappily at the face and form of his friend. In youth that face hadpossessed a Greek serenity and blitheness, dependent perhaps on itsclear aquiline feature, the steady transparent eyes--_coeli lucidatempla_--the fresh fairness of the complexion, and the boyish brow underits arch of pale brown hair. And to stronger men there had always beensomething peculiarly winning in the fragile grace of figure andmovements, suggesting, as they did, sad and perpetual compromise betweenthe spirit's eagerness and the body's weakness.
"Don't make yourself unhappy, my dear boy," said Hallin at last, puttingup a thin hand and touching his friend--"I _shall_ give up soon.Moreover, it will give me up. Workmen want to do something else withtheir evenings in July than spend them in listening to stuffy lectures.I shall go to the Lakes. But there are a few engagements still ahead,and--I confess I am more restless than I used to be. The night comethwhen no man can work."
They fell into a certain amount of discursive talk--of the politicalsituation, working-class opinion, and the rest. Raeburn had been alivenow for some time to a curious change of balance in his friend's mind.Hallin's buoyant youth had concerned itself almost entirely withpositive crusades and enthusiasms. Of late he seemed rather to havepassed into a period of negations, of strong opposition to certaincurrent _isms_ and faiths; and the happy boyish tone of earlier yearshad become the "stormy note of men contention-tost," which belongs,indeed, as truly to such a character as the joy of young ideals.
He had always been to some extent divided from Raeburn and others of hisearly friends by his passionate democracy--his belief in, and trust of,the multitude. For Hallin, the divine originating life was realised andmanifested through the common humanity and its struggle, as a whole; forRaeburn, only in the best of it, morally or intellectually; the restremaining an inscrutable problem, which did not, indeed, prevent faith,but hung upon it like a dead weight. Such divisions, however, are amongthe common divisions of thinking men, and had never interfered with thefriendship of these two in the least.
But the developing alienation between Hallin and hundreds of hisworking-men friends was of an infinitely keener and sorer kind. Since hehad begun his lecturing and propagandist life, Socialist ideas of allkinds had made great way in England. And, on the whole, as theprevailing type of them grew stronger, Hallin's sympathy with them hadgrown weaker and weaker. Property to him meant "self-realisation"; andthe abuse of property was no more just ground for a crusade whichlogically aimed at doing away with it, than the abuse of other humanpowers or instincts would make it reasonable to try and do awaywith--say love, or religion. To give property, and therewith the fullerhuman opportunity, to those that have none, was the inmost desire of hislife. And not merely common property--though like all true soldiers ofthe human cause he believed that common property will be in the futureenormously extended--but in the first place, and above all, todistribute the discipline and the trust of personal and privatepossession among an infinitely greater number of hands than possess themalready. And that not for wealth's sake--though a more equaldistribution of property, and therewith of capacity, must inevitablytend to wealth--but for the soul's sake, and for the sake of thatcontinuous appropriation by the race of its moral and spiritualheritage.
How is it to be done? Hallin, like many others, would haveanswered--"For England--mainly by a fresh distribution of the land."Not, of course, by violence--which only means the worst form of wasteknown to history--but by the continuous pressure of an emancipatinglegislation, relieving land from shackles long since struck off otherkinds of property--by the assertion, within a certain limited range, ofcommunal initiative and control--and above all by the continuous privateeffort in all sorts of ways and spheres of "men of good will." For allsweeping uniform schemes he had the natural contempt of the student--orthe moralist. To imagine that by nationalising sixty annual millions ofrent for instance you could make England a city of God, was not only avain dream, but a belittling of England's history and England's task. Anation is not saved so cheaply!--and to see those energies turned toland nationalisation or the scheming of a Collectivist millennium, whichmight have gone to the housing, educating, and refining of English men,women, and children of to-day, to moralising the employer's view of hisprofit, and the landlord's conception of his estate--filled him with agrowing despair.
The relation of such a habit of life and mind to the Collectivist andSocialist ideas now coming to the front in England, as in every otherEuropean country, is obvious enough. To Hallin the social life, thecommunity, was everything--yet to be a "Socialist" seemed to him moreand more to be a traitor! He would have built his state on the purifiedwill of the individual man, and could conceive no other foundation for astate worth having. But for purification there must be effort, and foreffort there must be freedom. Socialism, as he read it, despised anddecried freedom, and placed the good of man wholly in certain externalconditions. It was aiming at a state of things under which the joys andpains, the teaching and the risks of true possession, were to be forever shut off from the poor human will, which yet, according to him,could never do without them, if man was to be man.
So that he saw it all _sub specie aeternitatis_, as a matter not ofeconomic theory, but rather of religion. Raeburn, as they talked, shrankin dismay from the burning intensity of mood underlying his controlledspeech. He spoke, for instance, of Bennett's conversion to HarryWharton's proposed bill, or of the land nationalising scheme he wasspending all his slender stores of breath and strength in attacking, notwith anger or contempt, but with, a passionate sorrow which seemed toRaeburn preposterous! intolerable!--to be exhausting in him the verysprings and sources of a too precarious life. There rose in Aldous atlast an indignant protest which yet could hardly find itself words. Whathelp to have softened the edge and fury of religious war, only todiscover new antagonisms of opinion as capable of devastating heart andaffections as any _homoousion_ of old? Had they not already cost himlove? Were they also, in another fashion, to cost him his friend?
* * * * *
"Ah, dear old fellow--enough!" said Hallin at last--"take me back toItaly! You have told me so little--such a niggardly little!"
"I told you that we went and I came back in a water-spout," said Aldous;"the first rain in Northern Italy for four months--worse luck! 'Rain atReggio, rain at Parma.--At Lodi rain, Piacenza rain!'--that might aboutstand for my diary, except for one radiant day when my aunt, BettyMacdonald, and I descended on Milan, and climbed the Duomo."
"Did Miss Betty amuse you?"
Aldous laughed.
"Well, at least she varied the programme. The greater part of our day inMilan Aunt Neta and I spent in r
ushing after her like its tail after akite. First of all, she left us in the Duomo Square, running like adeer, and presently, to Aunt Neta's horror, we discovered that she waspursuing a young Italian officer in a blue cloak. When we came up withthe pair she was inquiring, in her best Italian, where the 'Signor' gothis cloak, because positively she must have one like it, and he, cap inhand, was explaining to the Signorina that if she would but follow himround the corner to his military tailor's, she could be supplied on thespot. So there we all went, Miss Betty insisting. You can imagine AuntNeta. She bought a small shipload of stuff--and then positively skippedfor joy in the street outside--the amazed officer looking on. And as forher career over the roof of the Duomo--the agitation of it nearlybrought my aunt to destruction--and even I heaved a sigh of relief whenI got them both down safe."
"Is the creature all tricks?" said Hallin, with a smile. "As you talk ofher to me I get the notion of a little monkey just cut loose from abarrel organ."
"Oh! but the monkey has so much heart," said Aldous, laughing again, asevery one was apt to laugh who talked about Betty Macdonald, "and itmakes friends with every sick and sorry creature it comes across,especially with old maids! It amounts to genius, Betty's way with oldmaids. You should see her in the middle of them in the hotel _salon_ atnight--a perfect ring of them--and the men outside, totally neglected,and out of temper. I have never seen Betty yet in a room with somebodyshe thought ill at ease, or put in the shade--a governess, or aschoolgirl, or a lumpish boy--that she did not devote herself to thatsomebody. It is a pretty instinct; I have often wondered whether it isnature or art."
He fell silent, still smiling. Hallin watched him closely. Perhaps thethought which had risen in his mind revealed itself by some subtle signor other to Aldous. For suddenly Raeburn's expression changed; theover-strenuous, harassed look, which of late had somewhat taken theplace of his old philosopher's quiet, reappeared.
"I did not tell you, Hallin," he began, in a low voice, raising his eyesto his friend, "that I had seen her again."
Hallin paused a moment. Then he said:
"No. I knew she went to the House to hear Wharton's speech, and that shedined there. I supposed she might just have come across you--but shesaid nothing."
"Of course, I had no idea," said Aldous; "suddenly Lady Winterbourne andI came across her on the terrace. Then I saw she was with that man'sparty. She spoke to me afterwards--I believe now--she meant to bekind"--his voice showed the difficulty he had in speaking at all--"but Isaw him coming up to talk to her. I am ashamed to think of my ownmanner, but I could not help myself."
His face and eye took, as he spoke, a peculiar vividness and glow.Raeburn had not for months mentioned to him the name of Marcella Boyce,but Hallin had all along held two faiths about the matter: first, thatAldous was still possessed by a passion which had become part of hislife; secondly, that the events of the preceding year had produced inhim an exceedingly bitter sense of ill-usage, of a type which Hallin hadnot perhaps expected.
"Did you see anything to make you suppose," he asked quietly, after apause, "that she is going to marry him?"
"No--no," Aldous repeated slowly; "but she is clearly on friendly,perhaps intimate, terms with him. And just now, of course, she is morelikely to be influenced by him than ever. He made a great success--of akind--in the House a fortnight ago. People seem to think he may comerapidly to the front."
"So I understand. I don't believe it. The jealousies that divide thatgroup are too unmanageable. If he _were_ a Parnell! But he lacks justthe qualities that matter--the reticence, the power of holdinghimself aloof from irrelevant things and interests, the hardself-concentration."
Aldous raised his shoulders.
"I don't imagine there is any lack of that! But certainly he holdshimself aloof from nothing and nobody! I hear of him everywhere."
"What!--among the smart people?"
Aldous nodded.
"A change of policy by all accounts," said Hallin, musing. "He must doit with intention. He is not the man to let himself be be-Capua-ed allat once."
"Oh dear, no!" said Aldous, drily. "He does it with intention. Nobodysupposes him to be the mere toady. All the same I think he may very welloverrate the importance of the class he is trying to make use of, andits influence. Have you been following the strike 'leaders' in the_Clarion?_"
"No!" cried Hallin, flushing. "I would not read them for the world! Imight not be able to go on giving to the strike."
Aldous fell silent, and Hallin presently saw that his mind had harkedback to the one subject that really held the depths of it. The truestfriendship, Hallin believed, would be never to speak to him of MarcellaBoyce--never to encourage him to dwell upon her, or upon anythingconnected with her. But his yearning, sympathetic instinct would not lethim follow his own conviction.
"Miss Boyce, you know, has been here two or three times while you havebeen away," he said quickly, as he got up to post a letter.
Aldous hesitated; then he said--
"Do you gather that her nursing life satisfies her?"
Hallin made a little face.
"Since when has she become a person likely to be 'satisfied' withanything? She devotes to it a splendid and wonderful energy. When shecomes here I admire her with all my heart, and pity her so much that Icould cry over her!"
Aldous started.
"I don't know what you mean," he said, as he too rose and laid his handon Hallin's for a moment. "But don't tell me! It's best for me not totalk of her. If she were associated in my mind with any other man thanWharton, I think somehow I could throw the whole thing off. Butthis--this--" He broke off; then resumed, while he pretended to look fora parcel he had brought with him, by way of covering an agitation hecould not suppress. "A person you and I know said to me the other day,'It may sound unromantic, but I could never think of a woman who hadthrown me over except _with ill-will._' The word astonished me, butsometimes I understand it. I find myself full of _anger_ to the mostfutile, the most ridiculous degree!"
He drew himself up nervously, already scorning his own absurdity, hisown breach of reticence. Hallin laid his hands on the taller man'sshoulders, and there was a short pause.
"Never mind, old fellow," said Hallin, simply, at last, as his handsdropped; "let's go and do our work. What is it you're after?--I forget."
Aldous found his packet and his hat, explaining himself again,meanwhile, in his usual voice. He had dropped in on Hallin for a morningvisit, meaning to spend some hours before the House met in theinvestigation of some small workshops in the neighbourhood of DruryLane. The Home Office had been called upon for increased inspection andregulation; there had been a great conflict of evidence, and Aldous hadfinally resolved in his student's way to see for himself the state ofthings in two or three selected streets.
It was a matter on which Hallin was also well-informed, and feltstrongly. They stayed talking about it a few minutes, Hallin eagerlydirecting Raeburn's attention to the two or three points where hethought the Government could really do good.
Then Raeburn turned to go.
"I shall come and drag you out to-morrow afternoon," he said, as heopened the door.
"You needn't," said Hallin, with a smile; "in fact, don't; I shall havemy jaunt."
Whereby Aldous understood that he would be engaged in his commonSaturday practice of taking out a batch of elder boys or girls from oneor other of the schools of which he was manager, for a walk or to seesome sight.
"If it's your boys," he said, protesting, "you're not fit for it. Handthem over to me."
"Nothing of the sort," said Hallin, gaily, and turned him out of theroom.
* * * * *
Raeburn found the walk from Hallin's Bloomsbury quarters to Drury Lanehot and airless. The planes were already drooping and yellowing in thesquares, the streets were at their closest and dirtiest, and the trafficof Holborn and its approaches had never seemed to him more bewilderingin its roar and volume. July was in, and all freshness had a
lreadydisappeared from the too short London summer.
For Raeburn on this particular afternoon there was a curious forlornnessin the dry and tainted air. His slack mood found no bracing in the sunor the breeze. Everything was or seemed distasteful to a mind out oftune--whether this work he was upon, which only yesterday had interestedhim considerably, or his Parliamentary occupations, or some tiresomeestate business which would have to be looked into when he got home. Hewas oppressed, too, by the last news of his grandfather. The certaintythat this dear and honoured life, with which his own had been so closelyintertwined since his boyhood, was drawing to its close weighed upon himnow heavily and constantly. The loss itself would take from him anobject on which affection--checked and thwarted elsewhere--was stillfree to spend itself in ways peculiarly noble and tender; and as forthose other changes to which the first great change must lead--histransference to the Upper House, and the extension for himself of allthe ceremonial side of life--he looked forward to them with an intenseand resentful repugnance, as to aggravations, perversely thrust on himfrom without, of a great and necessary grief. Few men believed lesshappily in democracy than Aldous Raeburn; on the other hand, few menfelt a more steady distaste for certain kinds of inequality.
He was to meet a young inspector at the corner of Little Queen Street,and they were to visit together a series of small brush-drawing andbox-making workshops in the Drury Lane district, to which the attentionof the Department had lately been specially drawn. Aldous had no soonercrossed Holborn than he saw his man waiting for him, a tall strip of afellow, with a dark bearded face, and a manner which shyness had made atrifle morose. Aldous, however, knew him to be not only a capitalworker, but a man of parts, and had got much information and some ideasout of him already. Mr. Peabody gave the under-secretary a slightpreoccupied smile in return for his friendly greeting, and the twowalked on together talking.
The inspector announced that he proposed to take his companion first ofall to a street behind Drury Lane, of which many of the houses werealready marked for demolition--a "black street," bearing a peculiarlyvile reputation in the neighbourhood. It contained on the whole theworst of the small workshops which he desired to bring to Raeburn'snotice, besides a variety of other horrors, social and sanitary.
After ten minutes' walking they turned into the street. With itscondemned houses, many of them shored up and windowless, its narrowroadway strewn with costers' refuse--it was largely inhabited bycosters frequenting Covent Garden Market--its filthy gutters and brokenpavements, it touched, indeed, a depth of sinister squalor beyond mostof its fellows. The air was heavy with odours which, in this July heat,seemed to bear with them the inmost essences of things sickening anddecaying; and the children, squatting or playing amid the garbage of thestreet, were further than most of their kind from any tolerable humantype.
A policeman was stationed near the entrance of the street. After theyhad passed him, Mr. Peabody ran back and said a word in his ear.
"I gave him your name," he said briefly, in answer to Raeburn'sinterrogative look, when he returned, "and told him what we were after.The street is not quite as bad as it was; and there are little oases ofrespectability in it you would never expect. But there is plenty of theworst thieving and brutality left in it still. Of course, now you see itat its dull moment. To-night the place will swarm with barrows andstalls, all the people will be in the street, and after dark it will beas near pandemonium as may be. I happen to know the School Board visitorof these parts; and a City Missionary, too, who is afraid of nothing."
And standing still a moment, pointing imperceptibly to right and left,he began in his shy, monotonous voice to run through the inhabitants ofsome of the houses and a few typical histories. This group was mainlypeopled by women of the very lowest class and their "bullies"--that isto say, the men who aided them in plundering, sometimes in murdering,the stranger who fell into their claws; in that house a woman had beenslowly done to death by her husband and his brutal brothers under everycircumstance of tragic horror; in the next a case of flagrant andrevolting cruelty to a pair of infant children had just been brought tolight. In addition to its vice and its thievery, the wretched place was,of course, steeped in drink. There were gin-palaces at all the corners;the women drank, in proportion to their resources, as badly as the men,and the children were fed with the stuff in infancy, and began forthemselves as early as they could beg or steal a copper of their own.
When the dismal catalogue was done, they moved on towards the furtherend of the street, and a house on the right hand side. Behind the veilof his official manner Aldous's shrinking sense took all it saw andheard as fresh food for a darkness and despondency of soul already greatenough. But his companion--a young enthusiast, secretly very critical of"big-wigs"--was conscious only of the trained man of affairs,courteous, methodical, and well-informed, putting a series ofpreliminary questions with unusual point and rapidity.
Suddenly, under the influence of a common impression, both men stoodstill and looked about them. There was a stir in the street. Windows hadbeen thrown open, and scores of heads were looking out. People emergedfrom all quarters, seemed to spring from the ground or drop from theskies, and in a few seconds, as it were, the street, so dead-alivebefore, was full of a running and shouting crowd.
"It's a fight!" said Peabody, as the crowd came up with them. "Listen!"
Shrieks--of the most ghastly and piercing note, rang through the air.The men and women who rushed past the two strangers--hustling them, yettoo excited to notice them--were all making for a house some ten ortwelve yards in front of them, to their left. Aldous had turned white.
"It is a woman!" he said, after an instant's listening, "and it soundslike murder. You go back for that policeman!"
And without another word he threw himself on the crowd, forcing his waythrough it by the help of arms and shoulders which, in years gone by,had done good service for the Trinity Eight. Drink-sodden men andscreaming women gave way before him. He found himself at the door of thehouse, hammering upon it with two or three other men who were therebefore him. The noise from within was appalling--cries, groans,uproar--all the sounds of a deadly struggle proceeding apparently on thesecond floor of the house. Then came a heavy fall--then the sound of avoice, different in quality and accent from any that had gone before,crying piteously and as though in exhaustion--"Help!"
Almost at the same moment the door which Aldous and his companions weretrying to force was burst open from within, and three men seemed to beshot out from the dark passage inside--two wrestling with the third, awild beast in human shape, maddened apparently with drink, and splashedwith blood.
"Ee's done for her!" shouted one of the captors; "an' for the Sistertoo!"
"The Sister!" shrieked a woman behind Aldous--it's the nuss he means! Isor her go in when I wor at my window half an hour ago. Oh! yer_blackguard_, you!"--and she would have fallen upon the wretch, in afrenzy, had not the bystanders caught hold of her.
"Stand back!" cried a policeman. Three of them had come up at Peabody'scall. The man was instantly secured, and the crowd pushed back.
Aldous was already upstairs.
"Which room?" he asked of a group of women crying and cowering on thefirst landing--for all sounds from above had ceased.
"Third floor front," cried one of them. "We all of us _begged_ and_implored_ of that young person, sir, not to go a-near him! Didn't we,Betsy?--didn't we, Doll?"
Aldous ran up.
On the third floor, the door of the front room was open. A woman lay onthe ground, apparently beaten to death.
By her side, torn, dishevelled, and gasping, knelt Marcella Boyce. Twoor three other women were standing by in helpless terror and curiosity.Marcella was bending over the bleeding victim before her. Her own leftarm hung as though disabled by her side; but with the right hand she wasdoing her best to staunch some of the bleeding from the head. Her bagstood open beside her, and one of the chattering women was handing herwhat she asked for. The sight stamped itself i
n lines of horror onRaeburn's heart.
In such an exaltation of nerve _she_ could be surprised at nothing.When she saw Raeburn enter the room, she did not even start.
"I think," she said, as he stooped down to her--speaking with pauses, asthough to get her breath--"he has--killed her. But there--is a chance.Are the--police there--and a stretcher?"
Two constables entered as she spoke, and the first of them instantlysent his companion back for a stretcher. Then, noticing Marcella'snursing dress and cloak, he came up to her respectfully.
"Did you see it, miss?"
"I--I tried to separate them," she replied, still speaking with the samedifficulty, while she silently motioned to Aldous, who was on the otherside of the unconscious and apparently dying woman, to help her with thebandage she was applying. "But he was--such a great--powerful brute."
Aldous, hating the clumsiness of his man's fingers, knelt down and triedto help her. Her trembling hand touched, mingled with his.
"I was downstairs," she went on, while the constable took out hisnote-book, "attending a child--that's ill--when I heard the screams.They were on the landing; he had turned her out of the room--then rushedafter her--I _think_--to throw her downstairs--I stopped that. Then hetook up something--oh! there it is!" She shuddered, pointing to a brokenpiece of a chair which lay on the floor. "He was quite mad with drink--Icouldn't--do much."
Her voice slipped into a weak, piteous note.
"Isn't your arm hurt?" said Aldous, pointing to it.
"It's not broken--it's wrenched; I can't use it. There--that's all wecan do--till she gets--to hospital."
Then she stood up, pale and staggering, and asked the policeman if hecould put on a bandage. The man had got his ambulance certificate, andwas proud to say that he could. She took a roll out of her bag, andquietly pointed to her arm. He did his best, not without skill, and thedeep line of pain furrowing the centre of the brow relaxed a little.Then she sank down on the floor again beside her patient, gazingat the woman's marred face--indescribably patient in its deepunconsciousness--at the gnarled and bloodstained hands, with theirwedding-ring; at the thin locks of torn grey hair--with tears that ranunheeded down her cheeks, in a passion of anguished pity, which toucheda chord of memory in Raeburn's mind. He had seen her look so oncebefore--beside Minta Hurd, on the day of Hurd's capture.
At the same moment he saw that they were alone. The policeman hadcleared the room, and was spending the few minutes that must elapsebefore his companion returned with the stretcher, in taking the namesand evidence of some of the inmates of the house, on the stairs outside.
"You can't do anything more," said Aldous, gently, bending over her."Won't you let me take you home?--you want it sorely. The police aretrained to these things, and I have a friend here who will help. Theywill remove her with every care--he will see to it."
Then for the first time her absorption gave way. She remembered who hewas--where they were--how they had last met. And with the remembrancecame an extraordinary leap of joy, flashing through pain and faintness.She had the childish feeling that he could not look unkindly at heranymore--after this! When at the White House she had got herself intodisgrace, and could not bring her pride to ask pardon, she wouldsilently set up a headache or a cut finger that she might be pitied, andso, perforce, forgiven. The same tacit thought was in her mind now.No!--after this he _must_ be friends with her.
"I will just help to get her downstairs," she said, but with aquivering, appealing accent--and so they fell silent.
Aldous looked round the room--at the miserable filthy garret with itsbegrimed and peeling wall-paper, its two or three broken chairs, itsheap of rags across two boxes that served for a bed; its emptygin-bottles here and there--all the familiar, one might almost sayconventionalised, signs of human ruin and damnation--then at thisbreathing death between himself and her. Perhaps his strongest feelingwas one of fierce and natural protest against circumstance--against hermother!--against a reckless philanthropy that could thus throw thefinest and fragilest things of a poorly-furnished world into such ahopeless struggle with devildom.
"I have been here several times before," she said presently, in a faintvoice, "and there has never been any trouble. By day the street is notmuch worse than others--though, of course, it has a bad name. There is alittle boy on the next floor very ill with typhoid. Many of the women inthe house are very good to him and his mother. This poor thing--used tocome in and out--when I was nursing him--Oh, I wish--I _wish_ they wouldcome!" she broke off in impatience, looking at the deathly form--"everymoment is of importance!"
As Aldous went to the door to see if the stretcher was in sight, itopened, and the police came in. Marcella, herself helpless, directed thelifting of the bloodstained head; the police obeyed her with care andskill. Then Raeburn assisted in the carrying downstairs, and presentlythe police with their burden, and accompanied apparently by the wholestreet, were on their way to the nearest hospital.
Then Aldous, to his despair and wrath, saw that an inspector of police,who had just come up, was talking to Marcella, no doubt instructing heras to how and where she was to give her evidence. She was leaningagainst the passage wall, supporting her injured arm with her hand, andseemed to him on the point of fainting.
"Get a cab at once, will you!" he said peremptorily to Peabody; thengoing up to the inspector he drew him forward. They exchanged a fewwords, the inspector lifted his cap, and Aldous went back to Marcella.
"There is a cab here," he said to her. "Come, please, directly. Theywill not trouble you any more for the present."
He led her out through the still lingering crowd and put her into thecab. As they drove along, he felt every jolt and roughness of the streetas though he were himself in anguish. She was some time before sherecovered the jar of pain caused her by the act of getting into the cab.Her breath came fast, and he could see that she was trying hard tocontrol herself and not to faint.
He, too, restrained himself so far as not to talk to her. But theexasperation, the revolt within, was in truth growing unmanageably. Wasthis what her new career--her enthusiasms--meant, or might mean!Twenty-three!--in the prime of youth, of charm! Horrible, unpardonablewaste! He could not bear it, could not submit himself to it.
Oh! let her marry Wharton, or any one else, so long as it were madeimpossible for her to bruise and exhaust her young bloom amid suchscenes--such gross physical abominations. Amazing!--how meanly,passionately timorous the man of Raeburn's type can be for the woman! Hehimself may be morally "ever a fighter," and feel the glow, the sternjoy of the fight. But she!--let her leave the human brute and hisunsavoury struggle alone! It cannot be borne--it was never meant--thatshe should dip her delicate wings, of her own free will at least, insuch a mire of blood and tears. It was the feeling that had possessedhim when Mrs. Boyce told him of the visit to the prison, the night inthe cottage.
In her whirl of feverish thought, she divined him very closely.Presently, as he watched her--hating the man for driving and the cab forshaking--he saw her white lips suddenly smile.
"I know," she said, rousing herself to look at him; "you think nursingis all like that!"
"I hope not!" he said, with effort, trying to smile too.
"I never saw a fight before," she said, shutting her eyes again."Nobody is ever rude to us--I often pine for experiences!"
How like her old, wild tone! His rigid look softened involuntarily.
"Well, you have got one now," he said, bending over to her. "Does yourarm hurt you much?"
"Yes,--but I can bear it. What vexes me is that I shall have to give upwork for a bit.--Mr. Raeburn!"
"Yes." His heart beat.
"We may meet often--mayn't we?--at Lady Winterbourne's--or in thecountry? Couldn't we be friends? You don't know how often--" She turnedaway her weary head a moment--gathered strength to begin again--"--howoften I have regretted--last year. I see now--that I behaved--moreunkindly"--her voice was almost a whisper--"than I thought then. But itis all done with--couldn't we j
ust be good friends--understand eachother, perhaps, better than we ever did?"
She kept her eyes closed, shaken with alternate shame and daring.
As for him, he was seized with overpowering dumbness and chill. What wasreally in his mind was the Terrace--was Wharton's advancing figure. Buther state--the moment--coerced him.
"We could not be anything but friends," he said gently, but withastonishing difficulty; and then could find nothing more to say. Sheknew his reserve, however, and would not this time be repelled.
She put out her hand.
"No!" she said, looking at it and withdrawing it with a shudder; "ohno!"
Then suddenly a passion of tears and trembling overcame her. She leantagainst the side of the cab, struggling in vain to regain herself-control, gasping incoherent things about the woman she had not beenable to save. He tried to soothe and calm her, his own heart wrung. Butshe hardly heard him.
At last they turned into Maine Street, and she saw the gateway ofBrown's Buildings.
"Here we are," she said faintly, summoning all her will; "do you knowyou will have to help me across that court, and upstairs--then I shan'tbe any more trouble."
So, leaning on Raeburn's arm, Marcella made her slow progress across thecourt of Brown's Buildings and through the gaping groups of children.Then at the top of her flight of steps she withdrew herself from himwith a wan smile.
"Now I am home," she said. "Good-bye!"
Aldous looked round him well at Brown's Buildings as he departed. Thenhe got into a hansom, and drove to Lady Winterbourne's house, andimplored her to fetch and nurse Marcella Boyce, using her bestcleverness to hide all motion of his in the matter.
After which he spent--poor Aldous!--one of the most restless andmiserable nights of his life.