Volume Four—Chapter Seventeen.
In Sanctuary.
“Let them come if they dare, my dear,” said Thisbe stoutly. “I’ve only waited for this. You know how I’ve never said word against him, but have seen and borne everything.”
“Yes, yes,” sighed Mrs Hallam.
“For, I said to myself, the day will come when she will see everything in its true light, and then—”
Thisbe said no more, but cut her sentence in half by closing her lips more tightly than they had ever been closed before, as, with a smile, she busied herself about Julia and her mother.
“I was in a way last night,” she said cheerily, as she straightened first one thing and then another in the modest lodgings she had secured, “but I daren’t come away for fear you might get here while I was looking for you. You don’t know the relief I felt when Mr Bayle knocked at the door with you two poor tired things. There, you needn’t say a word, only be quiet and rest.”
Thisbe nodded from one to the other, and smiled as if there was not a trouble in the world. Then she stood rolling up her apron, and moistening her lips, as if there was something she wanted to say but hesitated. At last she went to Mrs Hallam’s side, and took hold of the sleeve of her dress.
“Let me go and ask Mr Bayle to take berths for you on board the first ship that’s going to sail, and get taken away from this dreadful place.”
Mrs Hallam gazed at her wistfully, but did not answer for a few moments.
“I must think, Thibs,” she said. “I must think; and now I cannot, for I feel as if I am stunned.”
“Then lie down a bit, my dear Miss Milly. Do, dear. She ought to, oughtn’t she, Miss Julie? There, I knew she would. It’s to make her strong.”
It was as if old girlish days had come back, for Mrs Hallam yielded with a sigh to the stronger will of the faithful old servant, letting her lift and lay her down, and closing her eyes with a weary sigh.
“Now I may go to Mr Bayle, mayn’t I?”
“No,” said Mrs Hallam sternly.
“Then to Sir Gordon, and ask him to help us?”
“No,” said Mrs Hallam again; “I must work alone in this—and I will.”
She closed her eyes, and in a few minutes seemed to have dropped off asleep, when Thisbe signed to Julia to accompany her out of the room.
“Don’t you fret and trouble yourself, my darling,” she whispered. “I’ll take care no one comes and troubles you. She’s worn out with suffering, and no doctor would do her good, or we’d soon have the best in the town. What she wants is rest and peace, and your dear loving hands to hold her. If anything will ease her that’s it.”
She kissed Julia, and the next moment the girl’s arms were clasped about her neck, and she sobbed upon her breast.
“It’s so terrible,” she cried. “I can’t bear it! I can’t bear it! I tried so hard to love him, but—but—”
“An angel with wings couldn’t have loved such a father as that, my dear.”
“Thibs!”
“Well, there, then, I won’t say much, my darling; but don’t you fret. You’ve both done quite right, for there’s a pynte beyond which no one can go.”
“But if we could win him back to—”
“Make you marry that man Crellock! Oh, my darling, there’s no winning him back. I said nothing and stood by you both to let you try, and I was ready to forgive everything; but oh, my pet! I knew how bad it all was from the very first.”
“No, no, Thibs, you didn’t think him guilty when he was sent out here.”
“Think, my dear! No: I knew it, and so did Sir Gordon and Mr Bayle, but for her sake they let her go on believing in him. Oh! my dear, only that there’s you here, I want to know why such a man was ever allowed to live.”
“Thibs, he is my father,” cried Julia angrily.
“Yes, my dear, and there’s no changing it, much as I’ve thought about it.”
Julia stood thinking.
“I shall go to him,” she said at last, “with you, and tell him why we have left him. I feel, Thibs, as if I must ask him to forgive me, for I am his child.”
“You wait a bit, my dear, and then talk about forgiveness by-and-by. You’ve got to stay with your poor mother now. Why, if you left her on such an errand as that, what would happen if he kept you, and wouldn’t let you come back?”
Julia’s eyes dilated, and her careworn face grew paler.
“He would not do that.”
“He and that Crellock would do anything, I believe. There, you can’t do that now. You’ve got to sit and watch by her.”
“Julia!” came in an excited voice from the next room.
“There, what did I tell you, my dear?” said Thisbe; and she hurried Julia back and closed the door.
“They’ll go back and forgive him if he only comes and begs them to, and he’ll finish breaking her heart,” said Thisbe, as she went down. “Oh, there never was anything so dreadful as a woman’s weakness when once she has loved a man. But go back they shall not if I can help it, and what to do for the best I don’t know.”
She went into the little sitting-room, seated herself, and began rolling her apron up tightly, as she rocked herself to and fro, and all the time kept on biting her lips.
“I daren’t,” she said. “She would never forgive me if she knew. No, I couldn’t.”
She went on rocking herself to and fro.
“I will—I will do it. It’s right, for it’s to save them; it’s to save her life, poor dear, and my darling from misery.”
She started from her chair, wringing her hands, and with her face convulsed, ending by falling on her knees with clasped hands.
“Oh, please God, no,” she cried, “don’t—don’t suffer that—that darling child to be dragged down to such a fate. I couldn’t bear it. I’d sooner die! For ever and ever. Amen.”
She sobbed as she crouched lower and lower, suffering an agony of spirit greater than had ever before fallen to her lot, and then rose, calm and composed, to wipe her eyes.
“I’ll do it, and if it’s wicked may I be forgiven. I can’t bear it, and there’s only that before he puts the last straw on.”
There was a loud tap at the door just then, evidently given by a hard set of knuckles.
“It’s them!” cried Thisbe excitedly; “it’s them!” The door was locked and bolted, and she glanced round the room as if in search of a weapon. Then going to the window, she looked sidewise through the panes, and her hard, angry face softened a little, and she opened the window.
“How did you know I was wanting you to come?”
Tom Porter’s hard brown face lit up with delight. “Was you?” he cried; “was you, Thisbe? Lor’! how nice it looks to see you in a little house like this, and me coming to the door; but you might let me in. Are you all alone?”
“Don’t you get running your thick head up against a wall, Tom Porter, or you’ll hurt it. And now, look here, don’t you get smirking at me again in that way, or off you go about your business, and I’ll never look at you again.”
“But Thisbe, my dear, I only—”
“Don’t only, then,” she said, in a fierce whisper; “and don’t growl like that, or you’ll frighten them as is upstairs into thinking it’s some one else.”
“All right, my lass; all right. Only you are very hard on a man. You was hard at King’s Castor, you was harder up at Clerkenwell, while now we’re out here rocks is padded bulkheads to you.”
“I can’t help it, Tom; I’m in trouble,” said Thisbe more gently.
“Are you, my lass? Well, let me pilot you out.”
“Yes, I think you shall,” she said, “I wanted you to come.”
“Now, that’s pleasant,” said Tom Porter, smiling; “and it does me good, for the way in which I wants to help you, Thisbe, is a wonder even to me.”
“Oh, yes, I know,” she said grimly. “Now then, why did you come?”
“You said you wanted me.”
“Yes; but tell me first why you came.”
“The Admiral sent me to say that he was waiting for the missus’s commands, and might he come down and see her on very partic’lar business? He couldn’t write, his hand’s all a shake, and he ain’t been asleep all night.”
“Tell him, and tell Mr Bayle, too, that my mistress begs that she may be left alone for the present. She says she will send to them if she wants their help.”
“Right it is,” said Tom Porter. “Now then, what did you want along o’ me?”
Thisbe’s face hardened and then grew convulsed, and the tears sprang to her eyes. Then it seemed to harden up again, and she took hold of Tom Porter’s collar and whispered to him quickly.
“Phe-ew!” whistled Sir Gordon’s man.
She went on whispering in an excited way.
“Yes, I understand,” he said.
She whispered to him again more earnestly than ever.
“Yes. Not tell a soul—and only if—”
“Yes.”
“Only if—”
“Yes, yes,” whispered Thisbe. “Mind, I depend upon you.”
“If Tom Porter’s a living soul,” he replied, “it’s done. But you do mean it?”
“I mean it,” said Thisbe King. “Now go.”
“One moment, my lass,” he said. “I’ve been very humble, and humble I am; but when this trouble’s over and smooth water comes, will you?”
Thisbe did not answer for a few moments, and then it was in a softened voice.
“Tom Porter,” she said, “there’s one upstairs half dead with misery, and her darling child suffering more than words can tell. My poor heart’s full of them; don’t ask me now.”
Tom Porter gave his lips a smart slap and hurried down the street, while Thisbe closed the window and went back to her chair, to rock herself to and fro again, with her hands busily rolling and unrolling her apron.
“I’ve done it,” she said; “but it all rests on him. It’s his own doing.”
Then, after a pause:
“How long will it be before they find out where we are? Not long. Hah!”
Thisbe King passed her hands up and down her bare brawny arms, and her face tightened for the encounter which she felt must come before long.