XVIII
CRUEL PROOF OF THIS MAN'S STRENGTH
As You Like It, i. 2.
The afternoon was already darkening into dusk one day late in January when Philip Ashe stood in the hallway of a squalid tenement house, looking out into a dingy court. The place was surrounded by tall buildings which cut off the light and made day shorter than nature had intended, an effect which was not lessened by the clothes drying smokily on lines above. In one corner of the court yawned like the entrance to a cave the mouth of the passageway by which it was entered. In another stood a dilapidated handcart in which some dweller there was accustomed to carry abroad his rubbishy wares. The windows were for the most part curtainless, rising row above row with an aspect of wretchedness which gave Ashe a sense of discomfort so strong as almost to be physical. Here and there rags and old hats did duty instead of glass; some windows were open, framing slatternly women.
These women were stupidly quiet. Ashe wondered if they would have talked to each other across the court if he had not been in sight, or if the gathering dusk silenced them. One of them was smoking a short black pipe, and once let fall a spark upon the head of another idler a couple of floors below. The injured woman poured forth a volley of oaths, and Ashe expected a war of words. Nothing of the sort occurred. The figure above was so indifferent as hardly to glance down where the offended harridan was steaming with a fume of curses.
Philip began to be uneasy. He looked up at the darkening sky, and backward to the gloom of the stairway behind him. No gas had been lighted in the building, and he wondered if any ever were. It was certainly too late for Mrs. Fenton to be poking about in these dangerous places. They had been doing charity visiting together, and she had insisted on coming to this one house more before going home. He had remonstrated, but she had laughed at his fears.
"I don't believe any of these places are really dangerous," she had declared. "I've been coming here for years, and nobody ever troubled me."
"By daylight it is all very well," he had answered, "but it's a different thing after dark. I have been here once or twice to see some sick person in the evening, and it is a rough place."
"But it isn't after dark," she had persisted, "and it won't be for an hour."
She had had her way, but Ashe reflected uneasily that if harm came to her it would be his fault. He should have insisted upon her going home. The light was fading fast, and the locality was one of the worst in town. He wondered why the mere absence of daylight gave wickedness so much boldness. Men who by day were the veriest cowards seemed to spring into appalling fearlessness as soon as darkness gave its uncertain promise of concealment. The thought made him turn, and begin slowly to walk up the stairs.
He was not sure what floor she meant to visit. She was going, he knew, to see a woman whose husband got drunk and beat her. She had told him about the poor creature as they came along. She was sure Mrs. Murphy must have known a decent life. She set her down as having been a housekeeper or upper servant who had foolishly married a rascal. The woman, Mrs. Fenton had added, was evidently ashamed of her present condition, and afraid that those who had known her in her better days should discover her.
"It is pitiful," Mrs. Fenton had said musingly, "to see how she clings to her husband. She pulls down her sleeves to cover the bruises, and tells how good he was to her when they were first married. She says he doesn't mean to hurt her, but that he's the strongest man in the court, and doesn't realize what he is doing. She's even proud of his strength."
"Strength is apt to impress women," Ashe had answered, not without a secret sense of humiliation to lack this quality.
As he walked gropingly up the dark stairway, a man came clumsily after, and presently stumbled past him. A strong smell of liquor enveloped the newcomer, and he lurched heavily against Ashe without apology. Philip heard his uneven steps mounting in the gloom, and followed almost mechanically. He paused in one of the hallways to listen to a babble of words in one of the rooms. It was chiefly profanity, but it hardly seemed to be ill-natured. It was simply a family cursing each other with well-accustomed vehemence. He grew every instant more and more uneasy, and thought of knocking at every door until he found his friend. What right had philanthropy to demand that a beautiful, noble woman should be exposed to the chances of a nest of ruffianism and vice? He was indignant at the committee for not delegating such work to men. Then he remembered that Mrs. Fenton was herself on the committee, and that it was by her own insistence that she was here.
"She is capable of any sacrifice to what she believes to be right," he said to himself; "but she is too good for such work; she is too delicate, too"—
Suddenly a noise arose on the floor above him. A man's voice, thick with anger or drink, was pouring out a stream of words, half oaths; a woman was shrilly entreating. Ashe sprang quickly upstairs, and as he did so he heard Mrs. Fenton scream. The sound was behind a door, and without stopping to deliberate he tried to open it. The latch yielded, but he could not open.
"Let me in!" he cried fiercely. "What is the matter?"
The voice of a man who was evidently against the door answered him with blasphemies. A woman within cried to the man to stop, while Mrs. Fenton called to Ashe for help. Philip set his shoulder against the door and strained with all his might to force it. He remembered then what Mrs. Fenton had said about the strength of the husband of her pensioner.
"Go to the window, and call the police," he shouted.
"He's holding me!" Mrs. Fenton cried back pantingly.
Philip strained more desperately, and as he did so he heard the window within flung open, and the voice of a woman yelling for the police. The man inside sprang forward with an oath, the door yielded, and Philip plunged headlong into the room.
As Philip fell upon his knees, he saw a man seize the woman who from the window was calling for help, and fling her to the floor. The sound of her fall, with her wild shriek beaten into a choking gasp by the force with which she struck, turned his heart sick; but his fear for Mrs. Fenton kept him up. He scrambled to his feet, and as he did so she ran toward him.
"Your cassock is all dust!" she cried hysterically. "Oh, come away!"
The absurdity of the words made him burst into nervous laughter; yet he saw that the drunken man was coming, and he instinctively put her behind him and took some sort of a posture of defense.
"Save yourself," he cried hastily. "He's killed the woman."
All this passed with the quickness of thought. There seemed to Philip hardly the time of a breath between the opening of the door and the blow which now fell upon the side of his face. Fortunately he partly evaded it, but he reeled and staggered, feeling the earth shake and the air full of stinging points of fire. He saw the figure of his assailant towering between him and the light; he had a glimpse of Mrs. Fenton rushing to the window to call again for help; he realized with a horrible shrinking that that hammer-like fist was again striking out for his face; he was conscious of a sickening impulse to run, a humiliating and overwhelming sense of his inability to cope with this brute and of even his ignorance how to try; yet most of all he felt the determination to defend Edith or to die in the attempt. In a wild and futile fashion he dashed against his assailant, striking blindly and furiously, crying with rage and weakness, but throwing all his force into the fight. He felt crushing blows on his head and chest. Once he was struck on the side of the throat so that he gasped for breath with the sensation that he was drowning. Now and then he felt his own fist strike flesh, and the sensation was to him horrible. He fought blindly, doggedly, inwardly weeping for the shame and the pity of it, wondering if there would never be any end, and what would happen to Mrs. Fenton if he were beaten helpless. Surely if aid were coming it must have arrived long ago. He had been fighting for hours. He kept striking on, but he felt his strength failing, and he could have laughed wildly at the pitiful feebleness of his blows. He was knocked down, and scrambled up again, amazed that he was not killed or disabled. His one hope lay in the fact that the man was evidently much the worse for drink, and often struck as blindly as himself. If he could but occupy the brute's attention until help came, Mrs. Fenton would be saved.
Suddenly he was aware that the roaring in his ears was not all from the ringing in his head, but that heavy steps were sounding from the stairway. In a moment more screaming women were swarming in, and the din become intolerable as they scuttled about him, calling out to his opponent to stop and not to do murder. Men followed, and a couple of policemen came in their wake. Ashe saw through heavy eyelids the shine of brass buttons, and felt that the wearers of the uniforms to which these belonged had seized upon his assailant. He staggered against the wall, sick, faint, and dizzy. The two policemen were having a severe struggle to subdue their prisoner, and it seemed to Philip that all the inhabitants of the neighborhood were crowding in at the narrow door. The wife lay where she had been dashed to the floor, and Mrs. Fenton bent over her.
"Oh, Mr. Ashe," the latter said, coming to him, "you must be terribly hurt! I think Mrs. Murphy's killed."
He tried to smile, but his face was swollen and unmanageable.
"It's no matter about me," he managed with difficulty to say, "if you are not hurt."
The realities of life came back. The whirling rush of the swift moments of the fight seemed already far off. The crowd examined him with frank curiosity, commenting on him as "the dude that's been scrappin' with Mike Murphy." He saw some of the women busy over the prostrate form of Mrs. Murphy, lifting her from the floor to the bed.
"Well, Mike," one of the policemen said, "I guess this job'll be your last. You've done it this time."
The prisoner seemed to have become sober all at once, now that he was in the hands of the law. He went over to the bed, between his captors, and examined the injured woman with the air of one accustomed to such occurrences.
"Oh, the old woman'll pull round all right," he growled. "She ain't no flannel-mouth charity chump."
Without a word Ashe put his hand upon the arm of Mrs. Fenton, and led her toward the door. The insult cut him more than all that had gone before. What had passed belonged to a drunken and irrational mood. This taunt came evidently from deliberate contempt and ingratitude. Philip had a bewildered sense of being outside of all conditions which he could understand. This shameless effrontery and brutality seemed to him rather the distorted fantasy of an evil dream than anything which could be real. His one thought now was to get his companion away before she was exposed to fresh insult.
They were detained a little by the police; but after giving their addresses were allowed to go. Ashe felt shaky and exhausted, but the hand of Mrs. Fenton was on his arm, and the need of sustaining her gave him strength. They got with some difficulty through the crowd and out of the court, and after walking a block or two were fortunate enough to find a carriage.
"Mr. Ashe," Mrs. Fenton said, as they drove up Hanover Street, "I'm afraid you're terribly hurt; and it is all my fault."
"No, no," he replied with swollen lips. "The fault was mine. I shouldn't have let you go into that place."
"But you did try to stop me; only I was obstinate. Oh, I don't know how to thank you for coming as you did."
"But what happened before I came?"
Mrs. Fenton shuddered.
"Oh, I don't think I know very clearly. That great drunken man came in, and asked me for money. Of course I didn't give it to him; and his wife tried to get him to let me go. Then he struck her on the mouth!"
"The brute!" Ashe involuntarily cried, clenching his bruised fists.
"Then he caught me by the waist, and I screamed; and in another minute
I heard you at the door."
"But it was the woman that called the police."
"Yes; and when she did that I was fearfully frightened. I knew that if she called the police against her own husband she must think that he'd really hurt me."
Philip leaned back in the carriage, dizzy with the overwhelming sense of the peril that had beset her,—her! Then, mastered by an overpowering impulse, he threw himself forward and caught her hands, covering them with kisses.
"Oh, my darling!" he gasped. "Oh, thank God you are safe!"
She dragged her hands away from him, and shrank back.
"Mr. Ashe!" she cried. "What is the matter with you? What are you doing?"
He did not attempt to retain his hold, but drew himself back into the darkness of his corner of the carriage. A strange calmness followed his outbreak; a sort of joyous uplifting which made him master of himself completely.
"I am sinning," he answered with a riotous sense of delight. "I am laying up remorse for all my future. I am telling you I love you; that I love you: I love you! I love you and I have saved you; and I shall brood over that, and do penance, and brood over it again, and do penance again, all my life long!"
"Oh, you are confused, excited, hurt," she cried. "You don't know what you are saying!"
"I know only too well what I am saying. I am saying that I"—
"Oh, for pity's sake, don't!" she moaned, putting out her hand.
He caught her wrist, and again kissed her hand passionately.
"Yes, I know that I ought not to say this now when you have had to bear so much already; that I ought never to say it; but it is said! It is said! You'll forget it, but I shall remember it all my life. I shall remember that you heard me say that I love you!"
He threw himself back into his corner, and she shrank into hers, while the carriage went rattling over the pavement. Aching and sore, Philip yet knew a wild exhilaration, a certain divine madness which was so intense a delight that it almost made him weep. It was like a religious ecstasy, recalling to his mind moments in which he had seemed to be lifted almost to trance-like communion with holy spirits.
"I ought to ask you to forgive me, Mrs. Fenton," he said as they drew near her house, "but I cannot. I did not mean to do this; but I can't regret it. I am sorry for you; I am sorry—I shall be sorry, that is—for the sin of it; but the sin is sweet."
He wondered at his own voice, so even yet so high in pitch.
"Oh, what shall I do?" Mrs. Fenton cried sobbingly. "Is it my fault that this happened?"
"Oh, nothing can be your fault. It is all mine! But you must love me, I love you so!"
"No, no," she exclaimed vehemently. "I don't love you! I cannot love you! For pity's sake don't say such things!"
She buried her face in her hands and burst into sobs. Philip set his lips together, smiling bitterly at the pain it gave him. He controlled his voice as well as he was able.
"I beg you will forgive me," said he. "I have been out of my head.
Forget my impertinence, and"—
He could not finish, but the stopping of the carriage at her door saved him the need of farther effort.
He assisted her to alight, rang the bell, and said goodnight in a voice which he was sure did not betray him to the coachman.