CHAPTER VI
Love is the universal epidemic, effectual in all climes and conditions; there is no inoculation that will secure exemption from its influence; only given a warm human heart, and there is the natural susceptibility.
So it is from high to low. The little blind god takes no count of difference in fortune or rank in life. Dynasties fall, thrones totter to the ground, crowns tumble to dust on kingly heads; but love rules and lives on, immortal, triumphant, unconquerable.
Jessica had never heard of Romeo and Juliet, of Faust and Marguerite, or King Cophetua and the beggar maid. All she knew was that she loved, was conscious only that for a kind word from the lips of the man who had befriended her, for a glance from those dark eyes; she would gladly have given up all the other glories the world could have put before her.
Poor Jessica, how sweet and yet how bitter had been the awakening in that gilded cabinet. How sweet to find herself there in reality, and not only in a dream; how bitter to know that she had no right there and that she must go!
That splendid golden room, with, all the wonderful undreamt-of things, was not for her. She looked down at her wet, dirt-stained dress, at her worn, ragged shoes, at her cold, red hands, and shuddered. She had no right there. Should she take advantage of his goodness to remain and sully the beauty of his palace--for to her it seemed little less--by her unworthy presence? No, woman-child as she was, she shrank from the thought; then caught up her hat and arose, resolute.
"He will think me ungrateful," she murmured with half-closed eyes. "He will think--no matter, he will forget me before half an hour. I will go back to Johann and chance the beating. This is no place for one like me."
With a little graceful gesture she bent over the mantel and pressed her lips to the spot where Adrien had rested his arm; then with noiseless steps she stole from the room.
The sun was breaking through the morning mist, but she shivered as its warm rays touched her, and with a weary sigh turned towards Soho.
It was all over, the little patch of fairy-light in the dreary darkness of her existence, and as she reminded herself of this fact she shuddered again.
Looking back, she remembered but little beyond the days she had passed with Johann and his shrewish wife. This strange adventure had been the first ray of sunshine in her poor existence. No wonder that she was unhappy at parting with it.
Suddenly as she passed into Oxford Street she stopped, struck with an idea that sent her blood flowing into her pale cheek, flushing it into living beauty. Her large eyes grew thoughtful and full of a strange light.
"Why should I go back to Johann?" she murmured. "Can't I follow him--the kind gentleman? Can't I be his servant?"
The answer came quick enough from her inner consciousness. No, she must go back. Of what service could she be to such a man as Adrien? There was nothing for it but to return to Cracknell Court. So, wearily, but still with that grace which Southern blood bestows, even though it runs in the veins of a gipsy, or such a street waif as Jessica, she walked on and reached Johann Wilfer's house.
Jessica knew that the man was not her father, but she knew little more than that. She had never asked him or Martha for any information about her parentage--indeed, had scarcely wished for any; it was enough for her than Johann gave her sufficient bread to keep life within her.
That gentleman was, at the moment of her arrival, absent, engaged on business concerning the sale of the faked picture to Mr. Harker, and Martha was still away; so Jessica, pausing at the door of the living-room to ascertain that it was empty, softly ascended the stairs leading to the garret which served as her special apartment.
It was as small and as squalid as all the other rooms in that crowded court; but it was different from them in one respect--it was clean.
A miserable chair bedstead of the cheapest kind, covered with a threadbare quilt; a chair with the back broken off; a washstand on three legs, and a triangular piece of silvered glass, the remains of a cheap mirror, composed the furniture.
This peculiarly-shaped piece of common glass reflected the girl's beautiful face in all manner of distorted forms. The quilt just kept her from perishing with the cold. But yet the mirror, the bed, and the room itself were precious to her, for they were her own. Beyond its sacred threshold Johann or Martha never passed. She had a key to it; and to enter now she unlocked the door.
After the luxury of Adrien's rooms the mean quality of her own apartment struck the girl more forcibly than usual, and sinking upon the bed, she covered her face with her hands and gave way to a flood of tears. But the weakness did not last long; and after a moment of two, with a sudden gesture, almost Italian in its intensity, she flung back her head and rose from her crouching position.
"I will not think of the beautiful place. I will not think of him, she told herself passionately.
"But oh! will he be sorry that I ran away, or will he laugh, and ask that proud servant to see that I haven't stolen anything?"
She shook her head mournfully at her own distorted reflection in the cracked mirror, then she sighed and went downstairs.
Johann had returned, wonderful to relate, still fairly sober; but this was probably due to the necessity of maintaining at least the appearance of sobriety in his transaction on behalf of the gang concerning the sale of the picture.
He was counting the coins on the table, some of them gold--for Jessica's quick eyes caught the shimmer of it--and he looked up half fiercely, half contemptuously as the girl entered.
"Well, where have been? You're like a cat or a policeman--never to be found when you're wanted. There was a fine lady came to see you this morning--a real swell, my girl." He laughed coarsely. "But of course, you were out of the way. Where had you got to?"
"Anywhere, nowhere," replied Jessica, who did not fear him when he was sober, though she hated him always.
"Ah, that's the style! The swell lady ought to have heard you talk like that. She'd say I was bringing you up well. Come here and let's have a look at you."
Jessica did not move, but stared at him steadily.
"What! You won't come?" he said with a grin. "Well, there's something for your obstinacy, you little mule!"
He flung a half-crown across to her, and Jessica took it up, then looked him questioningly in the face.
"You're thinking I'm mighty generous, eh? So I am, my girl--foolishly generous." He laughed mockingly, "Well, what do you say if all the lot's for you, eh?"
"All for me!" repeated the girl, stopping short in her task of making the mantelshelf neat; "all for me!"
"Yes, when you get it, little cat! All for you, indeed! No! it's for me; and I've a good mind to take the half-crown back. A fool and his money's soon parted; but he's more idiotic to part with other people's. I'm going out. I shall want some grub when I get back--'arf a pound of steak, an' a pot of porter, an' don't forget the gin. Mind you remember now, or I'll break every bone in your body." With which forcible admonition the man shuffled out.
After a few hours he returned, not blindly drunk, but spiteful, ill-tempered, and stupidly brutal.
About the same time on that day Adrien Leroy was making his way in the new car through the crowded thoroughfare of Oxford Street.
"Soho? Yus, sir. Crack'ell Court, fust turnin' on the left. I'll show yer, sir," piped the ragged urchin, whose heartfelt interest Leroy had purchased, along with his query, by means of a shilling.
Cracknell Court was small, evil-smelling, and teeming with children. Bidding the chauffeur wait at the entrance to the court, Adrien, to whom dust, noises, and evil smells were things of absolute pain, entered one of the dens and asked for Mr. Wilfer.
"There he is," said another urchin; and Leroy turned to face that individual, who was leaning against an open door.
"Am I speaking to Mr. Johann Wilfer?" he asked courteously.
"You are," returned Wilfer, taking the begrimed pipe from his mouth, and staring with bloodshot eyes at the handsome, high-bred face before him.
"Can you tell me if a young girl named Jessica returned to you safely this morning?" Leroy enquired.
"My niece, Jess, d'ye mean?" replied Wilfer, eyeing him suspiciously. "Ain't seen 'er fer months; run away last June, after 'elping 'erself to some of my cash, an' ain't been back since. 'Sides, what's it got to do with you, Guv'nor, I'd like to know? You mind yer own bus'ness."
He leered drunkenly at Leroy, who turned away with a look of disgust. He knew how useless it was to expect truth from such a quarter.
As the gentleman stepped out into the dirty court and returned to his car Johann Wilfer blinked his eyes in relief; then with an oath he stumbled up the rickety stairs into the living-room, and confronted Jessica, who was standing near the window.
"So that's yer little game, is it?" he said with a sneer; "you're goin' in for swells right away, are yer, my gal? Got your name as pat as a poll-parrot. Knows all my private business, I dessay; I'll break every bone in yer body!"
He stumbled towards her where she stood--her face still transfigured with joy at the sound of her benefactor's voice--and made a sudden grab at her hair. But, alert and lithe as a leopardess, she bounded over the table, and slipped past him down the staircase, from the top of which he launched forth a long volley of curses.
Quivering and shaking, both with fear of Wilfer's violence and her sense of injury at his denial of her presence to Leroy, Jessica ran, as fast as her frail body would permit her, through the intricate smaller streets and passages which abound in the Soho district. Having gone far enough, in her opinion, to be fairly safe from any danger of Wilfer's pursuit, she stopped to consider whether she should endeavour to find Leroy.
"After all," she thought, "perhaps it is best as it is. He would give me money, or perhaps a few kind words, and only make me long for him more. Let him go, believing Johann's falsehoods."
As she walked wearily along dim remembrances of earlier days thronged her brain; of two women--one whom she knew she had called Auntie--and who had treated her kindly enough, before Johann had got her into his power. Mingled with these thoughts came those of the man who had befriended her and even sought her out this day. When she remembered how he had rescued her from cold, hunger, and the dangers of the streets her eyes filled with tears of gratitude. Yet, though knowing how quickly he would aid her were she but to return to the beautiful room from which she had fled that very morning, she could not bring herself to seek his charity or ask his pity. She realised well enough that one such as she could never hope to win a look of love from him; but like the moth that hovers round the flame which brings it danger she nevertheless determined to see him again.
With this object in view she slowly wended her way to Jermyn Court, wherein was the room in which she had supped and slept so delightfully. Afterwards she thought she would try to gain some work that would at least secure food and lodging, however poor, where she could be safe from the cruelty of Wilfer; surely in all London there was something she could do.
When darkness came, worn out by watching and waiting in vain for Adrien, she again found herself without a home and without shelter; so, crouching on a doorstep, as she had done the previous evening, overcome with fatigue, she fell asleep.
In the course of the night a dark-robed woman, passing on the usual round of duty assigned to her, stopped and looked at her. She was one of the band of Good Samaritan Sisters of Mercy established in some of our London suburbs, who seek out the helpless and downtrodden in the race of life--with healing in their hands and pity in their hearts--striving to raise them up from their hopeless position to something better. She stopped, bent down, and, drawing her veil aside, looked closely at the motionless face. Then she sighed and turned her head away.
"So beautiful! So young! Can it be possible? Sister, sister!"
Jessica awoke at the gentle touch, and sprang to her feet.
"Johann! Don't strike me," she exclaimed, with her eyes half closed. "I----"
"My poor girl, no one shall beat you. Will you come with me?"
"With you?" repeated Jessica, now fully awake, but still eyeing the Sister with some suspicion. "Where? Not far?"
"No, not far. But why do you say that? Is there any one you particularly wish to be near?"
"No," replied Jessica, adding to herself, as the sister of Mercy took her hand, "but she shall not take me far away from him."
"A roof of thatch is better than that of heaven," is an old Spanish proverb, and means, doubtless, that the poorest accommodation is better than none, or that which the streets provide. Jessica, clinging to the Sister of Mercy's succouring hand, was gently led from the silence of the streets to the still greater silence of an attic in a quiet byway.
Here, seated by the remains of a small fire in a narrow grate, she watched with awkward interest, that was much like indifference, the efforts of her rescuer to revive the dying embers. Soup was warmed for her, but for a time she refused to take it.
"I am not hungry," she said. "Only tired--so tired! Why did you wake me, lady?"
"I awoke you because you were unhappy, and it was dangerous for one so young as you to lie asleep in the streets," replied the meek-eyed woman. "But you must not call me 'lady'; I am not a lady. Call me 'Sister.'"
"But you are not my sister," said Jessica petulantly. "I haven't any sister or brother, or father or mother."
"Poor thing!" said the woman, who by this time had made up a bed, plain enough it is true, but luxurious after the cold doorsteps, and she now helped Jessica to undress. "Poor thing, you are quite cold; and what are all these bruises? Ah! why will men be so cruel, when Heaven is so kind?"
"I don't know," said Jessica, who took the question as directed to herself. "I don't know anything. Besides, all men ain't cruel. He wasn't; he was kind--oh, so kind!"
"He--whom?" said the Sister. Then, as the girl did not reply, she looked hard at her and sighed again.
"Now you will sleep," she said, "Will you kiss me?"
With the impulsiveness of girlhood Jessica threw her arms round the linen-banded neck and kissed the Sister's pale face."
"Good-night," she said.
The Sister smoothed the coarse pillow, covered her up, and went softly from the room.
When Jessica awoke the woman was again beside her with a cup of tea, and some bread-and-butter. But the girl refused to eat.
"I am not hungry. I am not tired now, either, and I will go."
The Sister put her hand on the girl's arm. "Not yet," she said. "Where have you to go?"
"Nowhere," Jessica answered listlessly.
"Then stay with me," said the woman kindly. "See"--she brought a basket to the bedside--"here's some work. I will teach you to do this, and we will live together. Will you not stay?"
Jessica looked at the work, and silently nodded acquiescence. But nevertheless she sighed. To a nature such as hers freedom was life itself, and she was bartering it away for mere food. Besides, how could she now follow the one who had been so kind to her?
But she stayed, and patiently worked all day, striving earnestly to catch the knack of the needle, and emulating the tireless industry of the Sister, who worked thus during daylight that she might pursue her mission of mercy and succour at night. Thus passed some days, and then Jessica's blood grew restless; the narrow room seemed to her stifling and unendurable, and she pined for the open air, as a caged blackbird longs for its native woods.
The longing grew so irresistible that at last she succumbed to it; and one day, finding herself alone, she threw down the piece of work on which she was employed, and rising, snatched up her weather-stained hat.
"I can't stay," she sobbed; "I can't breathe here! I must go, or I shall die. I'll leave before she comes back. Oh! I wish she had not been so kind to me. I feel a worthless, miserable, ungrateful creature!"
Then she stole down the stairs, very much as she had slipped away from Adrien's residence, and gained the streets anew.